His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1) (2 page)

“I know,” he said. “Forgive me.”

“You’ll feel better,” his mother said. “You’ll
feel better about it, once it’s done. And you’re tired
now.”

Rovero was coming down the corridor.

“My father’s back?” Tyren said to him.

“He and your brother have just returned, sir. They’re in
the stable.”

“I need to speak with him,” Tyren said to his mother.

She shook her head. “It won’t do any good to speak with
him now. He’ll be thinking about horses. He went to look at the
yearlings. You can speak at dinner. You need rest.”

“I need to speak with him now.”

She stood back from him to look up into his face, realizing something
belatedly. “What’s wrong?” she said.

He didn’t answer her. He left her standing there and went
outside, wishing Rovero were not hovering behind him, too dry-mouthed
nervous, all of a sudden, to say anything to him. The stable was a
long, low, tile-roofed building of whitewashed limestone, with a
walled yard of its own and living quarters at the far end, adjoining
the guardsmen’s barracks, to house the stable-hands. The light
was dim inside and it took a moment for Tyren’s eyes to adjust.
When they did he could see his father and his older brother standing
a little way down the stall row with the stable-master, who was
holding a wax tablet and a stylus and was illustrating something for
Torien on the tablet.

Torien had been a younger son himself, had been a soldier. He’d
made a name for himself in the fighting at Tasso—made a name
for being foolhardy and arrogant and madly brilliant, Mureno had said
to Tyren, shaking his head and smiling when he’d said it. Any
other young commander would have been recalled, gotten safely away to
some quiet, comfortable, meaningless post, before he could lead his
men into disaster for his recklessness. But Torien had always had the
luck, and he’d ended up a hero for it. A long time ago now, all
of that, but he hadn’t lost the look of a soldier, or any of
the pride.

He’d seen Tyren come in and he dismissed the stable-master with
a quick wave of his hand.

“Tyren. Rovero told me you were here.”

“I just got back, sir.”

“Any trouble on the road?”

“No, sir.”

His father looked him over, looked at the gold commander’s
braid on his left shoulder, nodded his approval.

“I’ve something to show you,” he said.

Tyren followed his father down the row. A slave was brushing down a
long-legged black colt before one of the stalls. Torien stopped a
short distance away and indicated the colt to Tyren with a lifting of
his chin.

“What do you think?” he said.

It was a handsome animal, well-built, with a tapering face and wide,
intelligent eyes and an arching, high-crested neck. It was of the
Tassoan stock Torien especially prized, taller and leaner and lighter
of foot than Vareno stock. Tyren couldn’t help but admire it
and his father, watching him, was obviously pleased at his
admiration.

“Magnificent,” Tyren said. “Will you race him?”

His brother, Tore, who was three years older and who was Torien’s
heir, had come up behind them. He made a sound in his throat that
might have been laughter, might have been disgust.

“So you think we should race him,” he said.

Torien said, “He’s yours.”

He was too startled to say anything, at first. Then he said,
stupidly, “I’ve got a horse already.”

“Consider this my gift to you,” his father said.

He looked from his father to the black colt and back again. “Thank
you, sir,” he said.

Tore said, under his breath, but loudly enough Tyren could hear, “Far
too good a horse to waste on a soldier.”

“Enough,” said Torien, sharply. “The horse is
yours, Tyren—and the slave. In honor of your commission.”

He hadn’t really even noticed the slave at the colt’s
side: a Cesino, two or three years younger than himself, small and
dark-headed and high-cheekboned and coldly gray-eyed like the
old-blood mountain people from the western part of the province.

“It isn’t necessary—” he started to say, but
Torien cut him off.

“You’re an officer, not a common foot-soldier. Time you
had a decent horse and an attendant.”

Tyren said, “Thank you, sir. But I need to speak with you
alone.”

There was silence a moment. Torien’s eyes, fixed on Tyren’s
face, had gone suddenly sharp and cold. It took effort to meet that
gaze. Tyren swallowed, fighting the urge to duck his head away.

Torien straightened.

“Put the horse up,” he said to the slave. Then he jerked
his chin to indicate Tyren should walk with him further down the row.
There was an empty storeroom a little way down, with a narrow,
unshuttered slit of a window opening to the stable-yard, and when
they were both inside Torien shut the door and stood to face him with
his arms crossed.

“Tell me what this is about, then,” he said.

He didn’t allow himself to hesitate. “I’m ordered
to report for command at Souvin in a fortnight at the latest,”
he said.

“Souvin?”

He took the papyrus leaf from the wallet at his belt and unfolded it
and held it out. Torien reached to take it, slowly. There was silence
while he read the words to himself. When he was done he folded the
papyrus up very precisely and handed it back.

“Is this someone’s fool idea of a joke?”

“No, sir. That’s the commission I received.”

“They wouldn’t dare send you to Souvin—to send a
Risto to a place like Souvin.”

“Those are my orders,” said Tyren.

“Then what aren’t you telling me?”

That was the question he’d feared. When he said nothing Torien
swore aloud. “Son of a bitch. What have you done?”

He said, “There was—a matter involving Luchian Marro.”

“Marro,” said Torien, savagely as if it were an oath
itself.

“I—confronted him over his behavior. Had him punished for
conducting himself in a manner unbefitting an officer.”

“Was he behaving in such a manner?”

“Yes, sir. But he told me I’d pay for it, pay for
disgracing him. I—didn’t think much of it. He makes these
empty threats all the time. This time he must have meant it.”

“You’re telling me Marro arranged this?”

“It’s the only explanation I can think of.”

“I will write to Vione,” Torien said, “and I will
have this rescinded. That sniveling brat can’t possibly have
thought he’d succeed with this.”

“Sir,” said Tyren, slowly, “I don’t think you
should do that.”

“What in Hell do you mean?”

“I don’t think you should have the commission rescinded.
Those are my orders, and I’ve no real proof Luchian had a hand
in the thing.” He hesitated. “I don’t want it said
I used my father’s name to escape my duty. It would reflect as
badly on you as on me.”

Torien said nothing.

“I’m willing to go to Souvin,” Tyren said. “I
know it’s not what you wanted for me—”

“You’re a fool,” said Torien.

He opened the door and went out without another word.

Tyren went out after him, slowly. There was a tightness inside him.
Anger, more at himself than at his father—anger at his own
mulishness, his own stupid, stubborn pride. The stall row was empty
now except for the Cesino slave, who was hunkered down on his heels
at the door of the colt’s stall, waiting. Tyren ignored him and
went out into the yard. Only when he’d reached the steps of the
house did he realize the Cesino was coming along behind him. He
pretended he hadn’t noticed. He went up the steps and into the
house and round the atrium to his chambers. The Cesino followed him
into the anteroom and waited inside the curtained doorway a little
while, stiffly, uncertainly. Then he sat down, bracing his back
against the wall, staring straight ahead, blank-faced, hollow-eyed,
saying nothing. Easy to pretend he wasn’t even there. Tyren sat
at the desk with his back to him and passed the time marking
distances on a map of the Souvino region.

He still had his mother to deal with. For now the only thing to upset
her was that he hadn’t given her ample time to prepare some
elaborate celebration for his homecoming. He didn’t tell her it
was because he’d considered not coming home at all, and he
hadn’t yet found the heart to tell her how soon he’d be
leaving again.

They ate the evening meal in the great hall. The heavy dining table
was an ancient Cesino thing, hewn of black walnut wood and ornately
carved, but the chairs were tall and straight-backed in Vareno
fashion and the meal itself was Vareno fare: fish in a wine sauce,
bread dipped in oil, green herbs dressed with vinegar. His father sat
at the head of the table with Chæla at his right hand and Tore
and Tore’s wife Juile at his left. Tyren didn’t know
Juile well, knew only that she came of good stock back in Varen and
that her family, the Ordani, were favorites of the Emperor. She
greeted him with a light kiss on his cheek, murmured with a smile she
was glad to meet him finally, but she was quiet, pale, seemed
unhappy, and Tyren saw, with a coldness inside him, Tore didn’t
pay her much regard.

The girl, Challe, Tyren’s sister, sat next to her mother. She’d
grown since Tyren had seen her last. She was a young woman now, and
pretty. She’d be beautiful in a few years more. She smiled at
him across the table, shyly, her eyes darting down when he looked at
her, and for once, suddenly, he wished he’d been home more,
that he knew her better. They hadn’t had enough time before,
and it was too late now. In all likelihood she’d be full-grown
and married off before he saw her again.

The Cesino slave stood with the other servants in the shadows along
the wall, coming to refill his wine bowl when it was empty and then
resuming his position, never speaking a word.

His mother was speaking of Choiro.

“Such a lovely city in winter,” she said. “Not like
this place. The roads go all to mud here, mud and dirty snow. I’ll
be glad to go to Choiro in the wintertime.”

Tyren looked over to where his father sat, met his eyes and looked
away.

Torien said, “Our son has told you about his commission?”

He said it casually, carelessly. Tyren tensed. Dangerous when Torien
spoke like that. The carelessness was a lie, a mask. There was anger
underneath.

“Heaven, no, he hasn’t told me himself,” said
Chæla. “No one tells me anything. I’m still
waiting.”

“I think the reason he’s hesitant to tell you,”
said Torien, “is that he won’t be going to Choiro at
all.”

Silence settled over the table all at once.

“You were going to tell your mother about your commission?”
Torien said to Tyren.

He couldn’t mask it as Torien could. He was so angry that his
right hand, resting on the table, shook a little. He dropped it to
his lap and looked across the table at nothing.

“I’ve been posted to Souvin,” he said.

The Cesino slave, standing at his elbow to fill his wine bowl again,
froze suddenly, startled, the empty bowl clenched in one hand, the
wine skin in the other. He recovered himself quickly. He filled the
bowl and set it down again and backed away.

Tore was laughing. It was loud in the silence and Chæla was
confused by it.

“Souvin?” she said. “Where’s Souvin?”

“Souvin is nowhere,” said Tore. “The edge of the
Outland. That’s the point. They send the dregs to places like
Souvin—the ones they want to be rid of.”

“I don’t understand,” Chæla said.

“Our son is going to Souvin to bring honor to the Risto name,
of course,” said Torien.

“Or there’s the real reason,” Tore said. He was
still laughing. “Did you tell him the truth, Tyren? That you
crossed Luchian Marro for the sake of a Cesino foot-soldier?”

He was too startled to pretend, to act like that was nonsense and
laugh it off. Of course he should have known Tore might hear
something. There’d have been rumors. Even though Mureno had
taken care to shut the whole thing up there’d have been rumors,
and Tore had friends enough in Choiro for the rumors to reach him.

“So this is about a Cesino,” said Torien. The mockery had
vanished. His voice was suddenly cold and hard and sharp as a steel
blade. “You didn’t tell me that part.”

Tyren pushed back his chair and stood.

“You don’t know the circumstances,” he said to
Tore. And then, to his father: “I’ll be leaving in the
morning.”

He went out into the corridor, the Cesino coming quickly behind him.
When he’d gotten back to his rooms he laid out his bags again
and made sure they were in order, letting the anger go out of him
while he worked. The Cesino stood back a little and watched him in
silence.

“You know the mountains?” Tyren said to him, over his
shoulder. “Souvin?”

The Cesino made him no answer. Tyren waited a while, wondered if
possibly the Cesino didn’t understand Vareno that well; there
were few enough Vareni in the border mountains. But he’d obeyed
Torien’s order in the stable earlier and he’d reacted to
the words at the meal. Tyren turned to look at him. He repeated the
question, a little stumblingly, in Cesino. Still no answer, though
the Cesino looked up to him briefly, his gray eyes very cold.

The thing that had happened in Choiro came into his mind unbidden. He
turned away again. “See that you’re ready to leave in the
morning,” he said.

He went into the bedchamber and lay on his back on the bed without
undressing, his fingers laced behind his head. How much easier if he
hadn’t come back. Well, it was done with now and there was no
point in staying past tonight. He’d broken the news, borne the
consequences. There was nothing for him here now. He could leave
before first light and be all the way back to Chælor before
most of the household had even realized he’d gone.

He slept as he was, sore from the road, exhausted from confronting
his father.

* * *